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Home > Family > Parents on the Phone Accused of Neglecting Their Children

Parents on the Phone Accused of Neglecting Their Children

Melissa Willets

About the Author

Melissa Willets is a mom of three girls, one of whom is a newborn. She writes about pregnancy, parenting, home, health, and beauty. She loves running and drinking red wine - but never simultaneously.

About the Blog

WhatToExpect.com supports Word of Mom as a place to share stories and highlight the many perspectives and experiences of pregnancy and parenting. However, the opinions expressed in this section are those of individual writers and do not reflect the views of Heidi Murkoff of the What to Expect brand.

Do you spend time on the phone while you're around your child? Do you occasionally (or often) chat with a friend, check your text messages, peruse Facebook and Twitter or surf the Internet in the presence of your little one? If so, a new website says you are neglecting your kid.

Slate reported on the site, Parents on Phones, which publishes photos of parents who are consumed with their mobile devices while out with their children in places like parks and museums. The writer of the Slate piece found the site condescending because it's mocking these parents: Just because a parent may take time to send an email or a text doesn't make him or her a bad father or mother. In fact, he suggested that those parents could be missing a work meeting or a conference call to be at the park or the museum in the first place. That they are there with their children is what is important.

I see his point, but I'll admit to feeling a nagging sense of guilt when I ask my daughter to wait for me to build another tent for her while I text a friend or comment on a Facebook post. Even if I'm sending a work-related email, that guilt is still there. My daughter wants me to find her missing My Little Pony again, but I'm not quite done emailing my editor. Both are important, but which one can wait?

Doesn't every parent grapple with these kinds of dilemmas nearly every second of every day? I really want to push my daughter on the swings, but I also need to get back to someone via email about a work related-issue. No matter what I do first, my desire to do everything at once overwhelms me.

This is the real dilemma: We are parents in a world where we're connected to everyone at every moment. Our parents never had to deal with this! If they needed to make a phone call, they had no choice but to wait until the park excursion was over. If they needed to send out a communication, they got out a pen and a stamp.

The tattle-telling site that admonishes parents for "neglecting" their child while they're on the phone is taking it a bit far. But I'll admit to seeing its point. Our phones are robbing us from living in the moment, whether we're with our kids or out to dinner with our spouses. Perhaps that's the next incarnation of this concept: Dates on Phones.

Do you have any rules for when and where you can be on your mobile device around your kids? Tell us below in the comments section!